sword, but for the rich every thing was attainable. Pardons for the most
atrocious crimes, passports, safe conducts, offices of trust and honor,
were disposed of at auction to the highest bidder. Against all this sea
of corruption did the brave William of Orange set his breast, undaunted
and unflinching. Of all the conspicuous men in the land, he was the only
one whose worst enemy had never hinted through the whole course of his
public career, that his hands had known contamination. His honor was
ever untarnished by even a breath of suspicion. The Cardinal could
accuse him of pecuniary embarrassment, by which a large proportion of
his revenues were necessarily diverted to the liquidation of his debts,
but he could not suggest that the Prince had ever freed himself from
difficulties by plunging his hands into the public treasury, when it
might easily have been opened to him.

It was soon, however, sufficiently obvious that as desperate a struggle
was to be made with the many-headed monster of general corruption as with
the Cardinal by whom it had been so long fed and governed. The Prince
was accused of ambition and intrigue. It was said that he was determined
to concentrate all the powers of government in the state council, which
was thus to become an omnipotent and irresponsible senate, while the King
would be reduced to the condition of a Venetian Doge. It was, of course,
suggested that it was the aim of Orange to govern the new Tribunal of
Ten. No doubt the Prince was ambitious. Birth, wealth, genius, and
virtue could not have been bestowed in such eminent degree on any man
without carrying with them the determination to assert their value.
It was not his wish so much as it was the necessary law of his being
to impress himself upon his age and to rule his fellow-men. But he
practised no arts to arrive at the supremacy which he felt must always
belong to him, what ever might be his nominal position in the political
hierarchy. He was already, although but just turned of thirty years,